James McElwaine

biography
philosophy
performance
venues/tours
recordings
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I grew up off the coast of Texas, on a subtropical island called Galveston. It was hot and quiet. It was hot and a little dilapidated. It was hot, so hot that the lyrics to the song “Sunny Side of the Street” always puzzled me.

Music was a constant occurrence in our home. My mother played piano by ear, flawlessly and exclusively in the key of G major. That made for some interesting reharmonizations in a minor tune. My father swore he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but he always listened to every musical show on radio and television. My older sister Kay was the real artist in the family. She studied piano, so I studied piano. She sang, so I sang. We played duets between arguments.

My grandmother, Myrtle Mae, also played piano in the family key of G. She really liked rhythm-and-blues, and she was the one who introduced me to the music of Ray Charles, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. We would listen for hours to her radio and record player, comfortably parked on her front porch.

Having a grandmother who was a rocker seemed normal to me. The whole family was musically omnivorous...Mozart, Bill Haley, the Dixie Hummingbirds, Hank Williams, Peggy Lee, Miles Davis, the Hit Parade, and Liberace all played for us, every day, either on of the two radio stations or on the only TV channel we could receive in southeast Texas.

I never learned to discriminate styles as a young boy. I was wonderfully untrained in the belief that one style could somehow be intrinsically better than another. I was allowed to fall in love with all music.

After four or five years of piano, I picked up the clarinet and then the saxophone. I was lucky to have great teachers and understanding parents. Music became a pure focus for me, and the daily rigors of practice led me to the greater rigors of composition and arranging. I taught myself chord symbols and transpositions. I tried to transcribe TV themes and pop songs. I learned by myself the equal value of what I thought were exact reading and good improvisation.

A short while later, I remember listening for the first time to Miles Davis play “Stella by Starlight.” I carefully followed the lead sheet melody. When Miles got to the eighth note of the tune, he played Gb, not the G that's written there. It was an epiphany for me. I heard a great player take a note and place it beyond the grasp of the written melody, but not beyond the reach of the ear.

I started a rock band in junior high. Surf music was big and we covered the Champs and the Ventures. We never found the right bass player, so we played without one. When the Beatles hit, we all wanted to grow our hair long. None of us did.

We played jazz, country, blues, rock, and soul, all side by side in a lot of honky-tonks. My early professional experience seemed to follow my early listening...play it all, play it now.

Continued...